Monday, September 22, 2008

Israel GeocachingAs of Sept. 2008 I have cached in US (obviously), Belgium, Germany, Japan and Israel. I had some the most bizzarre experiences caching in Israel, and not what you might think.My first Israel geocache was the TLV Travel Bug Hotel. It is located on Hwy 1 (A major freeway) on a small pulloff for an entrance to an electrical substation. It is about half way between the airport and Tel Aviv on the westbound side of the freeway. I would pass it everyday when I was returning to my hotel from my job assignment.I pulled over to grab the cache towards the end of rush hour. It was a quick find, but decided to take it to my rental car to look through it and exchange TB's. This is where is get wierd. First a motorcyclist pulled over in front of me. Then a tractor trailer pulled in behind me. But wait is gets better.The motorcylist drove away after about 10 minutes. But the Truck did not. He was moving around a lot in his cab. Then he got out his truck with a newspaper and toilet paper in his hand. He went behind the road barrier and well, he started doing his business in the gravel, and reading the paper at that. I did not feel like I could put the container back with a guy crapping less then 100 feet away. Wehn he finished he went back to his truck. But again he was bouncing around in his cab. After sitting here for 30 minutes, I decided I needed to leave with the cache container. The next day I replaced the container with no issues, but how wierd is that??The next interesting cache was a new one placed in Jaffa. I had been placed there on July 20th. I was there at August 20th. It was a quick find, but nobody name was in the logbook. I was a FTF, even though it was over a month after it was published. It is not like this cache was out in the middle of nowhere. It was right by old town Jaffa (a really neat place to visit by the way). It was a 40 minute walk along the beach from my hotel in Tel Aviv, and only 15 minutes from some of the beach hotels. So why it took so long for someone to find seems strange to me.There are only 100 caches in the entire country of Israel, and they are not visited that frequently. In the end I got 5 caches in Israel during my 10 day stay there. 2 in Tel Aviv, 1 in Jaffa and 2 in Jerusalem. It was fun!!

Friday, September 19, 2008

Welcome to my new Blog.

This Blog will bring stories of my trips over the world. It will include my experiences with trains, subways, light rail, and geocaching.See my website for photos of railroad/transit systems from around the world, http://ktransit.com. My interest in railroads and transit began in childhood growing up in Brooklyn, NY. The F-Line Ave I and 18th Avenue stations was a 10-15 minute walk away. The N-Line 18th Ave station was a 25 min walk. Some boys grow out of interest in trains, but I did not.Geocaching is my newer hobby. This is basically high-tech treasure hunting using a GPS. To sum it up, I am using Billion Dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the forest (or tiny containers in the city). See http://geocaching.com for more informationAs far as my extensive travels, most of it has been due my job. I was a Field Service Engineer in the Semiconductor Industry for 14 years, now I'm a Technical account manager. (I've been in this industry for 21 years). These travels have taken me across the US, Europe and Asia.I hope this blog is interesting to all readers. But its main purpose is for me to document my trip experiences so I can remember it later.